Peacock Kathy Hilton, Kyle Richards.
Kyle Richards did not want to talk business during “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” reunion.
During the third and final part of the season 13 reunion, the Bravo star appeared to protect her estranged husband Mauricio Umansky when talk turned to his exit from her brother-in-law Rick Hilton’s real estate firm, Hilton & Hyland. She then shut the topic down completely.
In his 2023 memoir, “The Dealmaker,” Umansky, who has been separated from Richards since July 2023, went into detail about his decision to launch his own luxury brokerage firm after leaving Hilton & Hyland in 2011. He alleged that after he told Rick Hilton he wanted to become a “full partner” at H&H, his brother-in-law told him, “‘No, we’re not doing that.’”
“In my opinion, Rick wasn’t going to change his mind. And he wasn’t prepared to pay me what I’d earned,” Umansky wrote, per Us Weekly. “For their part, they didn’t see it that way. They couldn’t understand how I could just make the decision overnight and not give them a chance to convince me otherwise.”
Addressing Richards’ sister, Kathy Hilton, at the RHOBH reunion, host Andy Cohen said it was no “secret” that the launch of The Agency created tension between the Hilton and Umansky families. “[Mauricio] even wrote in his book regarding Rick’s company that ‘If they paid me what I deserved and showed me an inkling of professional love,’ he ‘would have stayed,’” Cohen said as he quoted from Umansky’s book.
Kathy Hilton responded to Cohen’s comments during the reunion, but it didn’t go over well with Richards.
Kyle Richards Cut Kathy Hilton Off When She Began to Talk About the Situation With Their Husbands
PeacockKathy Hilton and Kyle Richards.
Kathy Hilton shared her side of what went down when Umansky gave his resignation to Hilton & Hyland. “When [Mauricio] left, he did call on a Thursday, and Rick said ‘Okay, When are you planning on leaving?’ and [Mauricio] said, ‘On Friday,'” Kathy told Andy. “[Rick] said, ‘You’re family. Just know opening your own business is tough. The door is always open for you. Just don’t poach on my staff or my agents.'”
When Cohen asked if Umansky hired colleagues from Hilton & Hyland, Kathy alleged, “A few.”
Richards cut her sister off to defend her estranged husband’s business move. “He had people that were under him in the Umansky group at Hilton & Hyland. So he had built his group within Hilton & Hyland,” she clarified.
As Kathy Hilton continued to talk, Richards interrupted her to stop the story. “I don’t want to talk about business stuff,” she said. “I’m going to go back to two more things we went through hell through? I’ve been through enough.”
Cohen later commented on his Sirius XM show, “Radio Andy” to speculate on why he thinks Richards may have shut down the conversation about their husbands’ rival businesses. “I think that in the case of this Hilton & Hyland stuff, I can’t speak for Kyle on any level, but my gut is that there was probably so far she wanted to go on her show because she didn’t want to further complicate an already complicated relationship with her sister,” he said.
Mauricio Umansky Once Said He Never Poached Agents
PeacockMauricio Umansky.
The reunion episode aired just after a sneak peek scene for Umansky’s reality show, “Buying Beverly Hills” dropped. In the clip, Umansky shared his side of his exit. He alleged that ahead of his departure from Hilton’s firm, he brought in almost 20 percent of sales in a billion-dollar year. “I went to Rick and I said, ‘I’d really like equity, and to be a partner’ …and basically, I was told no,” Umansky claimed.
As for Kathy’s suggestion that he poached “a few” employees, Umansky previously told The Real Deal he never recruited anyone. “I can tell you, at the Agency, we have never ever recruited or poached an agent or a person that works here. Every person that works here knocked on our door. And everyone that works here wants to work here,” he said in 2017.
Despite the business drama, Kathy Hilton said she still considers Umansky to be family. “Even though you go through things with people, he’s my family. He’s my nieces’ father,” she said during the RHOBH reunion, which was taped in late January 2024.
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